Leading in Spoken Word: Workshop with Peter Kahn

Teachers, librarians and other poets/educators are invited to join Peter Kahn (founder of Respect the Mic) at the Manchester Poetry Library at Manchester Metropolitan University for an intimate and practical workshop.

For more than 20 years, Peter has been Poet in Residence at Chicago’s Oak Park and River Forest High School’s Spoken Word Club – the largest school-based spoken word programme in the world, and has been behind some of the most successful spoken word projects for young people internationally.

A leader in teaching poetry and building poetry communities, in this workshop Peter will share some of the learning from his work. This will be an interactive workshop with opportunities to write and share. If you are a teacher, facilitator, or are interested in what it takes to build a poetry community, this workshop is for you.

Peter Kahn is a high school English teacher based in Chicago, who runs the largest school-based Spoken Word programme in the world. A founding member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen, he has twice been a commended poet in the Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition. He co-founded the London Teenage Poetry Slam and, as a Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths, founded the Spoken Word Education Training Programme.

Runner-up in the 2019 NCTE and Penguin Random House Maya Angelou Teacher Award for Poetry, Peter holds an MA in English Education from The Ohio State University and an MFA from Fairfield University.

Along with Patricia Smith and Ravi Shankar, he edited The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks, and with Hanif Abdurraqib, Franny Choi and former student, Dan “Sully” Sullivan, edited Respect the Mic: Celebrating 20 Years of Poetry from a Chicagoland High School.

His debut collection, Little Kings, is published by Nine Arches Press. National Book Award winner Terrance Hayes writes, “Peter Kahn is the kind of reader of poetry, teacher of poetry, and poet who makes the world easier for other readers, teachers and poets.”